It’s nerve-wracking to live in the historical moment of an epic turning point, especially when the great groaning garbage barge of late industrial civilization doesn’t turn quickly where you know it must, and you are left feeling naked and ashamed with your dark worldview, your careful preparations for a difficult future, and your scornful or tittering relatives reminding you each day what a ninny you are to worry about the tendings of events.

Persevere. There are worse things in this life than not being right exactly on schedule.

Two simple words explain why more robust signs of an economic collapse have hung fire since the tremors of 2008: inertia and fraud. Never in human history has there been such a matrix of complex systems so vast, dense, weighty, and powerful for running everyday life (nor a larger population engaged in it). That much stuff in motion takes a while to slow down. The embodied energy has kept enough of it running to give the appearance of continuity. For instance, agri-biz still sends its amber waves of grain and tankers of corn-syrup to the Pepsico snack-food factories, and the WalMart trucks still faithfully convey the pallets of Cheetos, Fritos, Funyons, and Tostitos from the Pepsico loading dock to the big box aisles of glory. The freeways still hum with traffic even though oil is pricey at $100 a barrel. The lights stay on. The gabble and blabber of Cable TV continues remorselessly in the background of life. All of that is due to inertia. It gives the superficial impression of the old normal carrying on. Things go on until they can’t, in the immortal words of Herb Stein

The fraud is present in the abuse and misrepresentation of official statistics used as metrics in government policy, in the pervasive accounting chicanery of that same government in its fiscal dealings, as well as in our leading financial institutions and corporations, including control fraud in banking, interest rate rigging, mortgage and title fraud, front-running, naked shorting, re-hypothecation, money laundering, pumping-and-dumping, channel stuffing, the endless innovation of swindles, and, most importantly, the fundamental mispricing of the cost of money, which reverberates through everything else, most particularly real estate, stocks, and bonds. Beyond that, in the shadows of the shadowland known as shadow banking, a liminal realm of secrets and intrigues, only a few are privileged to know what is going on, and you can be sure they only know their end of the trade — while immense sums of ever more abstract “money” slosh through the derivative sewers on their way to oblivion in the ocean of failed trust.

So, don’t feel bad if this colossal armature of folly still stands, and have faith that the blinding light of God’s judgment will eventually shine even unto the watery depths where failed trust has sunk. Sooner or later the relationship between reality and truth re-sets to the calculus of what is actually happening.

Meanwhile, the big questions worth reflecting upon are: What is the shape of the future? How might we conduct ourselves in it and on our way to it; and how will we think and feel about all that? It’s very likely that the journey to where we’re going will be rougher than the actual destination, once we get there. There is a hearty consensus outside the mainstream financial media and the thickets of academia that the models we have been using to understand the economy look more broken each month, and this surely adds to the difficulty of constructing our own mental models for how the everyday world of the years ahead will operate.

Some of the commentators in blogville and elsewhere like to blame capitalism. Capitalism is a phantom adversary. It isn’t an economic system. It isn’t an ideology, really, or a belief system. If the word means anything, it describes the behavior of accumulated surplus wealth in concert with the known laws of physics — the movement of energy through time and space — and the choices we make organizing society in relation to that. The energy is embodied as capital, represented in money for convenience. Interest expresses the cost of money over time and the risks associated with lending it. By the way, interest rates work the same way under all political systems, despite attempts in some societies to criminalize it.

During the high tide of the industrial expansion, when fossil fuels were cheap and we accumulated the greatest wealth surplus ever in history, humanity made some very bad choices, squandering this possibly one-time bonanza. We fought two world wars, and lots of wasteful lesser ones. Russia and its imitators attempted to collectivize wealth under gangster government and only succeeded in impoverishing everyone but the gangsters. America built suburbia and Las Vegas. The one thing that no “modern” culture did was plan for a future when the fossil fuel orgy and the techno-industrial fiesta might wind down, which is exactly the case now. Instead, we opted for the Julian Simon folly of crossing our fingers and hoping that some unnamed band of genius wizard innovators would mitigate the problems of resource scarcity and population overshoot just in time.

The demonizers of capitalism propose to remedy our compound predicament by just getting rid of money. But the idea of a human society without money leaves you either up a baobab tree on the paleolithic savannah, or in some sort of Ray Kurzweil techno-narcissistic masturbation fantasy multiverse with no relation to the organic doings on planet earth. I suspect as long as there are human societies there will be things to exchange that have a quality we call “money,” and as long as that’s the case, some individuals will have more of it than others, and they will lend some of their surplus to others on terms. What most people call capitalism was a model of economy derived from a particular transitory moment in history. It seemed to describe reality, but after a while it didn’t because reality changed and it was, finally, just a model. Nothing lasts forever. Boo-hoo, Karl Marx, J.M Keynes, and Paul Krugman.

What’s cracking up first is the complexity and abstraction of our current money operations, sometimes loosely called the financialized economy. If we blame anything for our problems with money, blame our half-baked attempts to mitigate the wind-down of the techno-industrial cavalcade of progress by issuing ersatz surplus wealth in the form of debt — that is, promises to fork over hypothetical not- yet-accumulated wealth at some future date. There are too many promises now, and too few trustworthy promisors, and poor prospects for generating the volumes of wealth as we did in the recent past.

The hidden (or ignored) truth of this quandary expresses itself inevitably in the degenerate culture of the day, the freak show of pornified criminal avarice that the USA has become. It only shows how demoralizing our recent history has been that the collective national attention is focused on such vulgar stupidities as twerking, or the Kanye-Kardashian porno romance, the doings of the Duck Dynasty, and the partying wolves of Wall Street. By slow increments since about the time John F. Kennedy was shot in the head, we’ve become a land where anything goes and nothing matters. The political blame for that can be distributed equally between Boomer progressives (e.g., inventors of political correctness) and the knuckle-dragging “free-market” conservatives (e.g., money is free speech). The catch is, some things do matter, for instance whether the human race can continue to be civilized in some fashion when the techno-industrial orgy draws to a close.

In Part 2: How Life Will Change, we sort out the new operating principles that will matter more in the future than the trash heap of current cultural norms. The society that emerges from the post-growth economy will surely require a new moral compass, a set of values based on qualities of behavior and things worth caring about — as opposed to coolness, snobbery, menace, or power, the current lodestars of human aspiration.

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50 Comments

I'm definitely aware of the possibility of collapse, but think it necessary to recognize that there could be enough sloughs to mitigate the main avalanche; enough tremors to prevent a mega-thrust earthquake. Figuratively, a few buildings collapse but these are cleaned up, the space re-purposed, and life continues until the next shakeup, rinse and repeat. It could be "The Long Transition" for those with short attention spans, the average easily distracted inhabitant of the "fantasy multiverse."

If I were a power leader, I'm thinking "We don't want to stampede the herd with too much change, let's try to manage transition over time and allow a shift to the new normal." I think that is the best case scenario to be hoped for; certainly pain is involved, but more of a need for a Advil than morphine. Indeed the unsustainable will not last, but sustainability may have "momentum"...energy use is gradually limited to more and more vital purposes, and from more varied sources; flippant energy waste just becomes unaffordable and resources are used more carefully, then reused. It is stressful waiting for "craziness" to arrive. My thoughts of late are that one should prepare for ugly changes as much as possible while recognizing that change might come pretty slowly.

... and we're right in the thick of it. Looking for a "grand crash" to put an exclamation point on matters is, I believe, born out of the desire to be vindicated for seeing things as less-than-rosy. I also don't think that it's going to happen.

More likely, we'll continue to see a steady erosion of standard-of-living for the vast majority of the population, with more people continuing to be slide from their previous status as "economically necessary" to "economically superfluous". There will be events here and there that cause a sharper drop, followed by a period of rebuilding and reconsolidation that will be termed "recovery," except things will never get quite back to the level that they were before the drop.

This is a process that will play out over DECADES at the very least. That's why it's so imperceptible to the majority of folks who aren't familiar with the likes of CM, JHK, JMG, Orlov, Tainter, etc. They're still stuck in the realm of cognitive dissonance, aware that a box of cereal that used to be 16 oz. is now 13 oz. for the same price, but also absorbing the continuous stream of how the Dow is at record highs and shale oil is turning us back into an energy superpower.

Don't worry about being "vindicated". Just get your own shit in order to make your own life more resilient, and then help your neighbors, friends, and family do the same if they're interested to do so by seeing your example.

i read How to prosper during the coming bad years by Howard Ruff in 1979, which prescribed storing water, food, seeds, tools and the typical prep for the collapse that some of you all are now just getting into...i'm still ready for it myself (always have had a years supply of food, 2 months of water) but i dont get excited about it any more...if it happens i'll be ready, but i aint holding my breath...

... and we're right in the thick of it. Looking for a "grand crash" to put an exclamation point on matters is, I believe, born out of the desire to be vindicated for seeing things as less-than-rosy. I also don't think that it's going to happen.

More likely, we'll continue to see a steady erosion of standard-of-living for the vast majority of the population, with more people continuing to be slide from their previous status as "economically necessary" to "economically superfluous". There will be events here and there that cause a sharper drop, followed by a period of rebuilding and reconsolidation that will be termed "recovery," except things will never get quite back to the level that they were before the drop.

This is a process that will play out over DECADES at the very least. That's why it's so imperceptible to the majority of folks who aren't familiar with the likes of CM, JHK, JMG, Orlov, Tainter, etc. They're still stuck in the realm of cognitive dissonance, aware that a box of cereal that used to be 16 oz. is now 13 oz. for the same price, but also absorbing the continuous stream of how the Dow is at record highs and shale oil is turning us back into an energy superpower.

Don't worry about being "vindicated". Just get your own shit in order to make your own life more resilient, and then help your neighbors, friends, and family do the same if they're interested to do so by seeing your example.

I would tend to agree, except that history has never known a period of such prosperity, and as a result so many human beings have never been so, well, pampered with stuff. (Granted, in the so-called 'first world' moreso than in the 'developing world') The average inhabitant of Homo-sapiens-dominated earth has either directly experienced the height of the cornucopia that cheap energy has brought us, or exposed to visualizations of the "lifestyle of prosperity" indirectly. To a certain extent we all have a sense of entitlement and a plainly unsustainable expectation of the future. You speak of the collapse as a long slide rather than a Great Implosion, and I tend to agree with you in theory, but this ignores what happens in the psychology of societies filled with humans who are used to having more, wanting more, and expecting more. Or at least more of the same. I believe that what we're seeing around the world right now is the beginning of expectations meeting reality, and people are pissed. Protesting. Picking up rocks, stones, and bottles aflame with petrol. How far can the standard of living drop here in America before people take to the streets, or begin taking what they can from their neighbors?

As a historian, I tend to see collapse as a long, slow decline, punctuated at the end by a sheer vertical drop into chaos of varying hellish-ness, depending on how the decline was managed. I just wonder how close to the vertical drop we're at, not whether there is one.

Energy: While M. King Hubbert thought that peak oil would be done with by now, due to other forms of energy taking the place of oil, we (the developed world) have mostly wasted the opportunity for change and continue with the status quo. I actually hope that we get the slow grind down that some, including John Michael Greer propose. The alternative now is Seneca's Cliff, instead of the almost reasonable down-slope of the logistics curve. I hope that we will get enough PV Solar, Wind, and other renewables on-line to make the down-slope prosperous.

Environment: Green-house gasses and global warming will eventually make living in Las Vegas (where I currently am) un-tenable. We are losing farmland and topsoil faster than it can be replaced globally. Fish stocks are being depleted. Water is an issue. We have exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet.

Economy: I just note that games are being played. Others here have already done a better job than I can on this topic.

If any of the 'shocks' that have been identified come to pass, then being prepared allows more options, and the allowance of possibly having thought through the possible responses. While I am only prepared for local or regional, short to medium length emergencies currently, I have thought about some of the issues that appear in the larger scale. A change in our behavior is required, and some of us are moving into those mind-sets.

J.M. Greer proposes that our catabolic collapse will take the remainder of this century. I hope that my preparations remain unused and that he is correct. Having some plans to mitigate the situation if he is not just seems prudent.

It's very challenging to maintain relationships when studying the collapse is a major part of your life. I can't maintain some of the relationships that I use to have because I went "ALL IN" regarding my passion for ecology and economic topics.

I don't want kids for so many reasons. I think it's selfish to bring a child into this world today if you have any insight on these subjects. I have no desire to pursue a career because it feels like an empty shell. I worked in conservation for a while and I monitored private easements. I learned that conservation quality is only as good as its management. When SHTF, conservation easements, or at least most of them are meaningless.

I was absolutely disgusted when I worked with the Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and other government agencies because they spent so much time on small and meaningless research projects. They do so much meaningless busy work to allow themselves to have full time jobs. Public education and much of their work is great, but MOST of their work that they spend their time on made my stomach turn. Now I work my butt off hustling in a kitchen where I get to multi-task and come home exhausted. It feels like work, and I enjoy that. The pay is modest.

Anyways, I certainly don't look attractive to women because I clearly "have no future." I am constantly referred to as negative and a pessimist and those are not attractive qualities to have. I don't think telling somebody that they have cancer is pessimism, it's just reality and fact

Whenever I am with friends I engage them in these topics. Most don't want to hear it. The ones that I can discuss resiliency with are apathetic and think they will be okay because they understand that peak oil exists, but they don't recognize how hard and fast adopting a different lifestyle is going to be.

My civil engineer and medical field friends are doing okay, but the rest keep pursuing education and internships in the hope that it will pay off. They don't want to work in restaurants because it is very degrading work and they have college educations. The problem is there is not much beyond that for us young folks.

Anyways, I keep working, saving, and investing is resources in the hopes of finding happiness and meaning later in life. I feel crazy.

I want a slow slog, many more of these 50%, wash, rinse and repeat cycles that we've had since 2000's recession, and 2008 Recession. Why? I feel very confident that I can take what I have and turn these 50% down and 50% up Fed driven events, and turn them into a Resiliency that would last my family for generations. Right now, I feel pretty secure just having the basics of food, clothing and shelter (w/heat) and my investment scheme.

Just before the 2008 crash, that NO ONE actually seen coming but a minority, I watched everything jump, just like it is today. I remember the shock of seeing oil hit $147 a barrel!, and I just began in this new interest of mine, and knew, absolutely knew that this wasn't right. I feel the same today. Must trust your gut sometimes.

I do know you speak the truth, today does resemble the 70's attitude that America was toast, just time now, any day, maybe tomorrow, it has to happen this month, soon then, this year for sure, sometime in my lifetime is absolutely the time. Thing is, a 50% decline is a remarkable gift and I want in on the next one, for sure. We've had two of these in 14 years or actually in 8 years and are over due for one now. Thing is, "do you feel lucky (?), punk". Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry.

Except for all the evidence of history which is defined by massive collapses of all sorts. Have you acquainted yourself with all the failed currencies over the last 100 years? The only difference in our society is we were the winners of WW2 and inherited the reserve currency and yoked western Europe to it. Politicians levered that system starting in the 1960's and then exponential money printing after 1971. When all assets are mispriced due to money intervention how can we expect a "smooth" correction. There is somewhat calm now only because the $ is incumbent and sticky. When it unsticks, watch out.

I look forward to after collapse as the opportunity for business will be great as incumbents are given less weight and owners reassess and consider new players. Radio didn't go way in the Great Depression. Always better to collapse sooner rather than later but politicians are blind to this fact.

I dont believe in the slow downside because of the ever exponentially growing demand factor. It took a long time to get to half, but it wont take nearly as long to head down the slope. Other forms of energy dont really help much because they only replace coal, not oil. You dont have to go all the way down either.

Collapse has a number and that number is either $60 a barrel or $150 a barrel. At 60 they cant make a profit and at 150 they cant sell it.

Since they are completely stuck on this, and have showed their hand by admitting defeat in the exploration area, its not a collapse that were going to get. Its a war and then a reorganization.

There will be no energy to rebuild a planet of 7 billion, but there will be plenty of energy to rebuild a planet of ~1 billion.

I think capitalism can and should take a large part of the blame for the collapse we're seeing, I'm not going to let it get off the hook that easily. The essence of capitalism is that you make profit by investing some embodied energy and resources ("capital") into some activity, then you offer the product of that activity into the market, and the money you receive in payment exceeds what you put in. The difference is "profit", which is commonly understood to be wealth creation. And the best explanation I've been able to come up with, after a few years of research into different economic schools of thought, of how specifically that wealth creation process actually works inside the black box, is that it comes from MAGIC! It sounds silly, but that's essentially the extent of the analysis I've seen, outside ecological economics circles. I would go so far as to suggest that our collective inability to understand where wealth "production" actually comes from is probably the greatest oversight in the history of humanity, because it leads so many down such dangerously misguided economic paths.

Capitalism is essentially just an organized way of consuming natural resources at a continually increasing rate, and doing so in a way that allows private parties to obtain their wealth from the market, absent major wealth redistribution from a centralized government.

As Wikipedia says, "Capitalism is an economic system in which trade, industry and the means of production are controlled by private owners with the goal of making profits in a market economy."

Basically, profit means you get more out than what you put in. Now, for every person in a society to be profitable, to those of us on this site who understand that real wealth comes from the natural world and that there are physical limits to the amount of useful things you can do with that extracted wealth, that above "getting out more than what you put in" is more commonly called a perpetual motion machine. And as I hope almost all of us understand, there is no such thing.

Capitalism worked when there were enough resources enabling the economy to grow. But the problem with capitalism that won't go away, even long after the relevance of capitalism has, is that it maintained and enforced the widespread belief amongst the economics community that the private sector is "productive" and that left to its own devices it creates wealth by itself. Well no, it doesn't, it merely consumes resources. Capitalism didn't drive growth. Capitalism enabled growth, in consumption of natural resources.

I don't like analyses that portray the alternatives to conventional capitalism as the failed communist countries. That is polarized thinking; there are many alternatives. What about Sweden? I'm not claiming it's a utopia but it's one of the better examples. And as to the suggestion that no modern country used its oil wealth to plan for an oil-less future, what about Norway? It put a large portion of its oil revenue into its sovereign wealth fund. Now we could argue about how much of that will evaporate when the financial collapse happens, but it was at least an attempt to socialize and redistribute more fairly, a recognition of conventional capitalism's failings.

Now that capitalism is ending, I'm sorry folks but we are going to have to come up with some other way of distributing wealth. Obviously communism isn't going to work, and capitalism won't, so what else is there? The easiest and best way I think is to continue with some form of mild capitalism, with the addition of a wealth tax instead of income tax. This will still allow people to engage in "wealth creation" (snark snark) at a more modest and reasonable scale, thereby providing an incentive to innovate and go to work every day, but not to get so rich so that they gain ownership of a disproportionate amount of the assets out there at the expense of everyone else. Because now, wealth is a zero-sum (well, declining actually) game.

I thought the collapse started awhile ago?...Japan, Greece, Venezuela, italy, Portugal, Spain, [add your favorite here]. Stop looking at the markets, they are merely the old western facade hiding the desert behind.

I have to admit, I waffle on this a good bit. I want to believe folks like Matt Ridley (Rational Optimist) will be "right" in that we will tech our way out of peak cheap oil and other ills. We staved off the Malthusian Population Bomb for...what, 50 years so far? But when I look at the Three "E's" I think this may be wishful thinking on my part. If we had "only" energy to worry about, if we'd managed our global economy in a reasonable manner, it might make me think we had the wherewithal to get thorium going, decentralize food production and think about how to plan for some of these changes.

But, that's not our story. At least, not my sense of it.

Whether it will be collapse or change, I think focusing on local food, politics and community will not only provide resiliency, but likely a better quality of life. That seems like a "win" no matter how this plays out.

understatement. I am blushing! Calling you "nillfilly" was simply me striking the adjoining keys on the key pad. My remark was so short I left without proof reading, and was a terrible happenstance. Please, forgive me.

The way I see it is that we now are drawing down our natural capital savings account (and have been for some time especially in the 2000s) and by doing so our status quo is perceived to be sustained. If you have zero income because you lost your job and lets say $200.000 in savings + interest. and yearly expenses (food, car, mortgage etc) of $20.000. You can go on with the status quo for 11 years without your neighbors knowing that something is wrong. In year 12 you file for bankruptcy.

Now I believe that we can do something about our predicaments it if we choose to use our rational "collective" brains, and implement socially constructive alternative narratives (it has to be a positive alternative or else we will possibly increase consumption due to our steep discount rates). But I am also aware that we are biologically wired to deny the inconvenient truth and turn to mysticism (i.e technology etc.) because it has been a successful survival strategy. To quote Reg Morrison from "The spirit in the gene": " Our time bomb is mysticism. Its delivery system is language. And its hiding place? The unfathomable coils of our DNA."

"But the idea of a human society without money leaves you either up a baobab tree on the paleolithic savannah, or in some sort of Ray Kurzweil techno-narcissistic masturbation fantasy multiverse with no relation to the organic doings on planet earth."

I subscribe to Tainter's definition of collapse, which is a societal "reset" to a lower level of energy and complexity due to diminishing returns on increased complexity eventually turning negative (an inflection point at which we've either arrived or are very close to). The "collapse" of a currency, while certainly disruptive (and even catastrophic to those living through it), is not the same thing as a societal collapse. Our (US) currency has gone through countless "collapses" and reorganizations throughout the entirety of our history, including the colonial period. In each instance, people were wiped out, wealth consolidated, and recovery occurred within a relatively short period of time. Actual collapses of complex civilizations, on the other hand, take a long time to play out.

I think that the definition of "wealth" offered by Schumacher, and expanded on by Greer, can prove useful here. Schumacher defined primary wealth as the natural resources and ecosystem services provided by the earth, and secondary wealth as products and services created by applying human labor and energy to primary wealth. Greer expanded this by defining tertiary wealth as financial instruments that are ultimately dependent upon the primary and secondary forms of wealth.

We currently live in a time where tertiary wealth has become increasingly disconnected from primary and secondary wealth. And I think that your focus on the financial side of things here is an example of that disconnect. I don't say this to somehow call you out, but rather to highlight just how pervasive this way of thinking is in our society, that people who are pretty switched on compared to the general populace still look at events through this deceptive lens.

Now, I readily admit that I find uncertainty around the energy "E" to be a much more credible argument regarding societal collapse. In fact, it's one that I go back-and-forth myself on. I've researched peak oil since around 2001 and can't discount the idea of falling off the energy cliff in the more near future.

Personally I think we've been in various stages of collapse since the late 19th or early 20th century. Social collapse started when the automobile took hold over mass society and the increased mobility began to tear apart community life (see Illich, "Energy and Equity"). Cultural collapse really took off in earnest when we substituted mass consumer culture for actual culture. Economic collapse started in the late 1960s or early 1970s as our more fixed monetary system ran up against the limits to growth, and was only staved off when we started using debt leverage in earnest to finance continually growing standards-of-living while simultaneously throwing people under the bus (the working class, primarily) in order to support that growth for a shrinking number of people. And I think it's pretty clear to all of us that the signs of energy and environmental collapse are strikingly clear to anyone who just takes the time to look.

So, in summary, I've found the long grind of collapse to be a more convincing argument over the rapid shock collapse. But I hold out the possibility that I could be completely wrong and that this time we're too far up the energy curve to allow collapse to play out over a longer period. The only thing that IS certain is that collapse is not a process that's particularly pleasant to go through.

This is how I see things too. A decades long process of humanity adjusting to doing less with less.

I see this as possibly a perpetual period of adjustment...or at least many centuries long...in other words, as far as I am personally concerned, it's a permanent condition.

While i agree with the permanence once it starts going down the darkside of the curve, i also believe the downside curve is very optimistic. I think it will go down alot faster than that. I stand by my prediction that Saudi will decline rapidly in a couple of years. They have massively overproduced for decades. The Us boom is basically a lie and very short term, i doubt they can even profit from the tarsands without $150-200 oil, and since everyone lies constantly about their reserves, you can easily believe they are lower than advertised.

We arent approaching peak oil, were 8 years past it. It took 100 years to get to half. It will take only 25 more to hit the bottom for the average person. Not 150. The rich will always have access to oil whether it comes from the ground or from a cornfield. Even 25 might be optimistic.

CAH, there are a few factors that have me concerned about fast collapse rather than a slow one like previous instances:

The US financial collapse will not just be a financial collapse, it will also be a hard collapse in terms of physical stuff available -- it imports around half of its oil and most of its manufactured goods via its trade deficit. Those will cease after the dollar loses its status. The only thing offsetting any imports after that for a while will be food exports.

The US has grown into some very dense and non-self sufficient cities like Los Angeles. I can't imagine what that place will be like once the spigots enabling consumption are cut off.

Interest rates will rise, further decreasing oil and other natural resource extraction.

The recent past of exuberant consumption, worldwide, has been a result of artificial interest rate suppression. When normal interest rates return, that consumption will dramatically fall, and unemployment will be a huge problem. I just don't see how that will be able to be addressed. Perhaps with expensive energy in the future, human-powered labour will make a come-back. We'll move into professions like rickshaw driving and manual farm labourers again. However, manual labour requires lots of food energy...

We have relied on a delicate just-in-time distribution system to squeeze as much profit out as possible. When infrastructure starts failing, this too will also fail and will lead to further shortages.

I think all countries will be hit by the financial collapse, but it will vary quite a bit in terms of how they are hit. China will likely see a large unemployment problem as its manufactured goods are no longer demanded. I don't see how they're going to be able to internalize their consumption that quickly. Those who retain their jobs or who bought PM's will have some nice purchasing power for a while. South America and Africa probably won't notice much change at all ... Japan will also have unemployment problems, as well as other demographic challenges. The US? I think it's manual labour for the future.

My fear is that the world is just not prepared for a global financial collapse and is very delicately balanced on highly manipulated markets right now; things could turn ugly. But, that's just me being a doomer. Maybe things will sort themselves out.

I actually think that Russia and China will be ok at least for a while. Russia will become the New America and it will sustain the Chinese manufacturing as long as the Russian and Iran oil reserves hold out.

They dont need the western world as much as people think they do. They have their own middle class and a rising Russian middle class and a number of other countries in the Brics.

the writing is on the wall for the west. Collapse wont be equal everywhere, and it will be hardest on those places that dont have their own resources like america and europe. 200 years of theft from the rest of the world is coming to a close.

Collapse? Madge, you're soaking in it. Remember that commercial? It's here. The developed first world nations are slowly starting to resemble third world countries with expectations managed downward.

If Putin is able to reveal to the world that the U.S. will only push so far, the perception of 'American super power' changes. It is vital to the reserve currency that the U.S be able to persevere through intimidation, proxy wars and trade agreements that provide it with leverage. Currently, all of these intersecting and supporting elements are being twisted and shaken up. Big Oil requires reliable bullying in order to operate, successfully and the reserve dollar needs oil to back it.

Instead of hunkering down waiting for a collapse, maybe we should be looking forward to 'the Release' from the dark Gnostic prison of Oil Hell. It could spur a new renaissance in environmental science, in global education for women--etc...

We are in collapse NOW. A reset is in the offing. It might just be an improvement.

Haven't visited here for a while, but it seems the discussion remains familiar. In my own "reality", friends and family continue their lives of wanting more, while their kids, most now in their late teens, save and buy cars, study for endeavours that may or may not exist in twenty years, and so on... Much like we did.

I'll be fifty next year, still happily married, still adore my own teenagers, still living in middle-class Melbourne, Australia. If I sold my motorbike and car tomorrow, I'd be debt free (except for those pesky bills of course :)). If it weren't for Camp Doomer, where a slow decline to a cliff seems a certainty, I'd say I was pretty content. But it's like living in quicksand, though not quite. "Am I crazy"? Guess it depends how you define crazy.

Like all forums, this is a place for those to chat amongst themselves, feel a little better, few as we are. But we must remember we are like Martians; who's there to listen? We have as much chance of changing the minds of (my) fellow Joes and Janes as demonstrating to Christians (or other) that God doesn't exist. We are truly on our own... This sounds a little sad, but perhaps it's also something to take comfort in; focuses one's thought, even gives one a heightened sense of purpose (and let's face it, there really isn't a lot of genuine purpose to life).

Nervous Nelly, my take on Free NL's statement is rural-to-urban migration patterns, currently typified in China, but it's occurring elsewhere too e.g. Bangladesh. China will move at least one quarter of a billion people to urban locations over the next decade or so.

Want to reclaim land for mass food production to feed a growing population? Build megacities and move rural dwellers to them (witness the extraordinary creation of these in China recently, a lot of which are still lying empty). Once moved and disenfranchised, these ex-rural people can be better controlled (as Free NL observed), particularly if you're controlling job creation (and therefore incomes). They're beholden to the government because they've been deprived of alternatives.

The consequences of this policy are unknown, since something of this scale has never been executed. Maybe the Chinese have a grand plan for what to do with millions of people who - depending on the success of future growth - are potentially unemployed (or unemployable), hungry, frustrated, out of their depth in a new environment. Whatever their solution(s), it's easier to deal with a big herd than a scared, scattered fragment.

I understand that our resources might last a long time (relatively speaking) and that the overall global grind down could take sometime, extending beyond our lifetimes.

But it seems an economic collapse could the the big event we have been planning for...I imagine this scenario:

The the world reaches a point where the U.S. can no longer export it's inflation in return for a higher standard of living. The economy in the U.S. tanks. And here's where it gets crazy - the U.S. can't make good on it's promises and all the people who are living on the government dole go crazy and that's where we have our crisis. People have become so accustomed to this that they can see no other way of living.

That's what I'm planning for - the day when the free gravy train stops and reality hits and those who were enjoying this free ride get booted off and are very cranky about it.

What does everyone else thing about this? Or is everyone else just planning for the long slow grind down as resources run out? I think there will be some serious discontent as a result of this.

Perhaps I am wrong, and the collapse is already in progress, as some seem to think, but if it is, it is an incomplete one. What I suspect will happen is that populations will lose faith in their fiat currencies to the point where they refuse to accept them as reward for services rendered or as payment for goods purchased.

Let’s face it, the lack of criminal proceedings brought against bankers who have laundered drug money and fiddled exchange rates etc. for their own personal gain can only mean that the governments are on their side, especially in the U.K. Not only that, but also we have all had to witness these same bankers reward themselves with seven figure bonuses for failing so badly that they had to be bailed out at our expense. How long before people declare that ‘enough is enough’?

There is more: with so many people doing two, three, or even more, jobs in order to make ends meet, and then being offered worthless little pieces of cotton reinforced paper as payment for their labour, how long will it be before there is a mood of revolution in the air and people refuse to work for effectively nothing? I imagine that a break from working all the hours God sends would be very attractive in its own right.

The problem for society at large is that these people do work that, despite the pittance that it usually attracts, is actually important, unlike that of so many others, such as advertising executives, bankers, film actors etc. etc. etc. Once the shelves don’t get stacked because the shelf stackers have stopped shelf stacking, or the delivery driver has declined to deliver the goods destined for those self-same shelves, it will not be long before we see a real collapse, i.e. one that you can get your teeth into.

How long before energy supply workers join in the fun and the lights go out? Think of all those lovely computers at the trading desks not even capable of low frequency trading let alone the high frequency stuff they were purchased for so that they could rob our pension funds little by little! How long before the water supply dries up, and with it the ability to cook a meal or flush the toilet? Of course, these are only minor inconveniences. It goes without saying that the collapse will only really go into top gear when we can no longer buy a Starbucks coffee.

There is an upside to all of this, believe it or not. There are grounds for arguing that climate change is now set upon a course where there are so many positive feedbacks now in operation that the only way we can hope to provide a chance for our descendants to survive is for there to be a complete economic collapse, with all that that implies; see Nature Bats Last http://guymcpherson.com/2013/01/climate-change-summary-and-update/

Perhaps I am wrong, and the collapse is already in progress, as some seem to think, but if it is, it is an incomplete one. What I suspect will happen is that populations will lose faith in their fiat currencies to the point where they refuse to accept them as reward for services rendered or as payment for goods purchased.

Let’s face it, the lack of criminal proceedings brought against bankers who have laundered drug money and fiddled exchange rates etc. for their own personal gain can only mean that the governments are on their side, especially in the U.K. Not only that, but also we have all had to witness these same bankers reward themselves with seven figure bonuses for failing so badly that they had to be bailed out at our expense. How long before people declare that ‘enough is enough’?

There is more: with so many people doing two, three, or even more, jobs in order to make ends meet, and then being offered worthless little pieces of cotton reinforced paper as payment for their labour, how long will it be before there is a mood of revolution in the air and people refuse to work for effectively nothing? I imagine that a break from working all the hours God sends would be very attractive in its own right.

The problem for society at large is that these people do work that, despite the pittance that it usually attracts, is actually important, unlike that of so many others, such as advertising executives, bankers, film actors etc. etc. etc. Once the shelves don’t get stacked because the shelf stackers have stopped shelf stacking, or the delivery driver has declined to deliver the goods destined for those self-same shelves, it will not be long before we see a real collapse, i.e. one that you can get your teeth into.

How long before energy supply workers join in the fun and the lights go out? Think of all those lovely computers at the trading desks not even capable of low frequency trading let alone the high frequency stuff they were purchased for so that they could rob our pension funds little by little! How long before the water supply dries up, and with it the ability to cook a meal or flush the toilet? Of course, these are only minor inconveniences. It goes without saying that the collapse will only really go into top gear when we can no longer buy a Starbucks coffee.

There is an upside to all of this, believe it or not. There are grounds for arguing that climate change is now set upon a course where there are so many positive feedbacks now in operation that the only way we can hope to provide a chance for our descendants to survive is for there to be a complete economic collapse, with all that that implies; see Nature Bats Last http://guymcpherson.com/2013/01/climate-change-summary-and-update/

I understand that our resources might last a long time (relatively speaking) and that the overall global grind down could take sometime, extending beyond our lifetimes.

But it seems an economic collapse could the the big event we have been planning for...I imagine this scenario:

The the world reaches a point where the U.S. can no longer export it's inflation in return for a higher standard of living. The economy in the U.S. tanks. And here's where it gets crazy - the U.S. can't make good on it's promises and all the people who are living on the government dole go crazy and that's where we have our crisis. People have become so accustomed to this that they can see no other way of living.

That's what I'm planning for - the day when the free gravy train stops and reality hits and those who were enjoying this free ride get booted off and are very cranky about it.

What does everyone else thing about this? Or is everyone else just planning for the long slow grind down as resources run out? I think there will be some serious discontent as a result of this.

I assume you're referring to the corporatocracy as they are the real recipients of taxpayers' largess. They won't rise up, they already own the government and will have to fall back on their decreasingly useful dollars without the government. If the "people" rise up, they will do it on Wall St. and Pennsylvania Ave. That's where the operators and beneficiaries of our ponzi system pull the strings. The rest of us are collateral damage, chaff in the wind, also rans - choose your metaphor. Focus on the real source of our problems and get your pitchforks and torches ready.

Be careful to recognize the kind of "dog whistle" politics discussed here:

The people in urban areas will be easy to control, all the powers that be will have to do is restrict or stop access to cash and deliveries of food, water and fuel and their populations will be begging for mercy within weeks, if not days. The collapse will be very uneven. Ironically, the Rust Belt, were the collapse has been underway for decades, may fare relativity well, we still have plenty of fresh water, farm land and hard woods for fuel. The South West, on the other hand, may well be completely depopulated.

James, You are a great boon to us and the Earth. I'm glad we did not lose you to the Stage where you would have not been able to do as much good (nor had the license to be so delightfully mischievous). Thanks for facing reality head-on, with compassion and humor and positive will.

I understand how your are feeling. I have a 5 year old son and learned about peak oil etc just after he was born. There are days, for his sake that I wish we'd never had him. Sometimes I worry what he will need to endure in life. We are working hard to teach him practical skills but we only know so much, and some of his best mentors (our grand-parents) are now gone.

I grew up poor, worked hard in low paying jobs and have always felt like work was not contributing to bettering society and I was just going through the motions of existence in a system. Now I think I know why and am concentrating on community health, Nursing, gardening and herbal medicine skills, formally and informally recognised. I also now realize my relative working poor poverty has been great training in frugality, learning about needs versus wants and making ends meet with little money. I am happy to live at or below the lifestyle I have as it is pretty simple, but looking back wish I had had better opportunities to make some spare money so I could be better prepared now for the future.

I have tried to introduce the topic to my farmer baby boomer parents who tell me not to worry. They are about to retire, and I am thankful that my Dad has little faith in the financial system for his own reasons and is going to keep his land rather than sell it. They have worked damn hard all their lives and I would be upset to see them loose everything. Friends don't want to hear what I have to say and are all concentrating on their place in the status quo future.

I've given up trying to educate others directly and am hoping that some of my lifestyle choices will be taken up by them through osmosis. I've decided it's like the oxygen in the aircraft situation, take care of yourself first, and then maybe you can help others.

Aircraft situations are (presumably) emergencies; they happen suddenly, will probably be accompanied by significant/insurmountable challenges (fireball, gravity shift, etc) and are over very quickly with little time to think. No-one, including the "best prepared", has been in one before. Sure the oxygen will drop - and everyone has access to it - but even if Fated thinks well enough to make use of his/her own mask as the plane plummets, he/she can't move from his/her seat anyway until the plane stops... And then it probably doesn't matter, unless the pilot's damn good/lucky.

Let's be honest, no-one can truly prepare for such panic. And our pilot may as well be (possibly is?) "Otto" from the movie Flying High.

If an abrupt change in the status quo can be said to be an emergent situation then we are, in fact, in an emergency.

To test the aircraft analogy, many emergent situations involving aircraft pose significant challenges. Most end in minor inconvenient (Jet Blue Airways flight 292), some with significant casualties ( United Airlines flight 232), very few are insurmountable ( Air France flight 447).

Fated's oxygen mask analogy is spot on. You MUST take care of yourself first. Not only are you no longer part of the solution if you become a casualty, studies have shown that you will have made the situation a full order of magnitude worse.

Another analogy might be a long distance bus trip. Imagine that we all boarded a bus in Los Angeles looking forward to a sight seeing vacation in New York. Some were in Ohio a couple of soft spoken but clearly intelligent people start to make their way down the isle gently saying "This bus DOES NOT have enough fuel to get to New York". The vast majority of the passengers literally pay them no attention, totally preoccupied with eating Cheetos and and looking at the latest news about Kim Kardasians butt. A few scoff loudly but begin to fidget and look anxiously out the window at the unfamiliar countryside. A very few ask more questions, "How do you know this, what can we do?" and are convinced that contingency plans must be made.

So here we are, the driver is unwilling or unable to tell us how much longer before the bus stops. We cannot figure out from the information at hand how long the bus might travel, only that it must inevitably stop some were in Pennsylvania. Possible scenarios: The driver is a homicidal maniac who never intended to deliver us to New York but is planning to kill us all in a fiery crash, very unlikely. The driver is an imbecile and has no idea that we don't have enough fuel and is going to get us all stranded by the side of the road through shear ignorance, also very unlikely. The driver set out on the journey in full faith that we would all get to New York, now realizes that he has made a mistake that is going to result in a great deal of inconvenience to a great many people and if feeling defensive and doesn't want to talk about it, possible. The driver took our money knowing that there was never enough fuel and is planning to ditch us some were and escape with a coconspirator, possible.

Further considerations: Presuming that the driver knows that we are not going to make it to New York, is he going to stop at the next major city were there is shelter, security and resources before the fuel is entirely gone or is he going to run the bus until it dies by the side of the road, and once the bus has stopped is he going to help us make connections to continue our journey or is going to make a run for it leaving us to our own devises?

My sense is that the driver has been in contact with the owners of the bus and that there has been a conversation back and forth. The company has written off the bus as an almost total loss, perhaps some salvage value in the future. The driver is likely doing the best he can with very limited resources and is trying to get us as close to the next major city, knowing full well that we're probably not going to make it. What happens after that will depend hugely on the courage and integrity of everyone on the bus.

So, to Fated, keep doing what you're doing. Recognize that we are all very disappointed that our plans are going to have to be changed. Form alliances with like minded people now to help each other look after our children and our stuff. Anticipate things that may be useful to know about Pennsylvania. And finally come to terms and be at peace with the idea that even though we will never get to New York and we will never get back to Los Angeles, Pennsylvania is a very lovely and civilized place and may end up being a better place to raise your child anyway.

I use to follow JHK and others, including Chris. Not much anymore. Are things bad, yes, of course. But that's life. The planet has always gone through troubled times. But, Chris, JHK and their kind are fear mongers. And the Internet is one big soap box for their kind.

So, is a collapse coming, maybe, but I'm 54, and I don't see it happening in my lifetime. I may not be making the money I use to, but, if you're smart, and have resources you'll get by. Think for yourself, and don't buy into all the BS online!

I think the point is not to fear the collapse but to rather make yourself and your family more self reliant. I do not think that is a bad thing at all. Nobody can predict if or more likely when a collapse may occur and the true nature of it's implications, but you can know how you would like to live, and i think many here seem to find great joy and satisfaction in their preparations.

Are You Crazy To Continue Believing In Collapse?

...I guess I'm coming from a Joe Average POV (living mainstream); that analogies are only for "believers". If I were to attempt to explain limits-to-growth, finite resources, etc to a fellow Joe or Jane (who hasn't really thought about the big picture) using a bus or plane or whatever analogy, no doubt I'd get a strange look. Yep, they'd say, "You ARE crazy!"

FWIW, I'm all in favour of sharing the basic math of compounding growth (about my intellectual limit anyway); siting China's growth rate as an example and asking whether it's sustainable for another ten years or not; whether the Chinese economy can double again in size in that period. I even use a pen and paper. That is, I prefer real world examples rather than analogies, which aren't real and are thus easily scoffed at.

Again, no disrespect.

Regards, Matt

PS. Ultimately, it all falls on deaf ears, so I shrug the shoulders and sleep well enough at night these days. What will be will be.

Not to be contradictory but I think you'll find that as you look around the internet this is one of the more optimistic sites. Further, one of the great attractions of this site is that rather then the typical bait and switch tactic of "THE WORLD IS GOING TO END AND YOUR FAMILY IS GOING TO DIE HORRIBLY IF YOU DON'T BUY MY BOOK", but rather it's "Something extraordinary is happening in the world and it is urgent and important that you understand what it is. To that end, here is a wealth of well thought out and useful information for free to get you started. If you would like a greater depth of material you are welcome to subscribe". I have found that much of the premium information has been of little value to me for lack of capitol but that access to the conversation that takes place between people who range all the from that "Oh SHIT", "Red Pill" moment to "I've been working on stepping out of the main stream for many years and it really is a more satisfying life style"

I'm not sure if this applies only to us B'morians, but there is apparantly a local currency in circulation here in Charm City, and it is being accepted by an increasing number of Baltimoreans and businesses in the area.